Unrated tornado, Forgan to Meade State Park, Oklahoma, May 17, 2019

1. EF065 to 85 mph

   Light damage. Surface peeled off some roofs, gutters and siding damaged, branches broken, shallow-rooted trees pushed over.

2. EF186 to 110 mph

   Moderate damage. Roofs badly stripped, mobile homes overturned or badly damaged, exterior doors lost, windows broken.

3. EF2111 to 135 mph

   Considerable damage. Roofs torn off well-built houses, frame homes shifted on their foundations, mobile homes destroyed, large trees snapped or uprooted, cars lifted off the ground.

4. EF3136 to 165 mph

   Severe damage. Whole stories of well-built houses destroyed, large buildings badly damaged, trains overturned, trees debarked, heavy cars lifted and thrown.

5. EF4166 to 200 mph

   Devastating damage. Well-built houses leveled, structures with weak foundations moved some distance, cars thrown and large missiles generated.

6. EF5over 200 mph

   Incredible damage. Strong frame houses swept off their foundations, car-sized missiles thrown more than 100 meters, steel-reinforced concrete badly damaged, high-rise buildings deformed.

7. Unratedthis tornado

   The survey recorded a tornado but could not put a number on it, most often because it crossed open country and damaged nothing a rating can be read from.

Rating

Unrated

Date

May 17, 2019

Touchdown

7:32 PM CDT (00:32 UTC)

Lifted

7:45 PM CDT (00:45 UTC)

On the ground

13 minutes

Path length

6.7 miles (10.8 km)

Path width

50 yards (46 m)

Deaths

0

Injuries

0

Counties

Beaver and Meade counties

Touchdown point

36.962, -100.564

Lift-off point

37.052, -100.515

Record number

1905171832-01

2 damage points were recorded along this path by NWS DDC, in the Damage Assessment Toolkit the survey teams carry. The strongest indicator was rated EF0.

• Based on chaser video the tornado crossed from Oklahoma at approximate this point. There was only rangeland grass a this location but based on video the tornado may have had winds greater than 100 MPH.
• Likely end point based on chaser video as the tornado roped out.

Survey points are preliminary and are the raw material the published rating was built from. Source: NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit.

A dryline moved through parts of the eastern Panhandles the afternoon of the 17th. Moisture (dewpoint temperatures) where much greater ahead of the boundary and instability was high enough for a few storms to form. There was sufficient wind shear (good clockwise turning of wind with height in this case) to allow a supercell thunderstorm to rapidly developed as it moved from southern to northern Beaver County, Oklahoma. A few miles south of the Oklahoma / Kansas, a tornado was reported with this supercell as the storm then quickly exited the Oklahoma Panhandle into southern Kansas as the tornado remained over rural, open country.

Severe thunderstorms developed in the panhandle of Oklahoma and up into southwest Kansas during the early evening along a dryline. Storms struggled to develop all afternoon due to warm air aloft but once they did form explosive growth was realized. Several long tracked and strong tornadoes occurred with the strongest storms.

Based on radar, pictures, reports, and videos, the best estimate was a touchdown around 733 PM CDT and crossed over the OK/KS state line around 735 pm. It then continued for at least another 5 minutes into rural southern KS. No damage was reported as the tornado remained in rough, open country.

This tornado moved out of Oklahoma but damage was not apparent as it passed through native grasses with no structures to hit.

From NOAA NCEI's Storm Events Database, the narrative the local forecast office wrote for Storm Data.

No tornado warning for this county appears in the archive as in force at the moment the tornado touched down.

Every warning and watch covering the touchdown point that day, from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service products. Lead time is measured from the issue of the warning in force to the touchdown time in the database, both of which were recorded to the minute by different people.

The Storm Prediction Center had this point in a Marginal Risk, with a 0.02 chance of a tornado within 25 miles. The outlook in force was issued at 19:56 UTC.

SPC's Day 1 convective outlook as it stood when the tornado began, read at the touchdown point. The same archive is on the radar archive.

The radiosonde launches on either side of the tornado, from the nearest station that was launching then, drawn and analyzed the way Storm Lab does: the same diagram, the same parcel and shear definitions SPC's mesoanalysis uses.

The Dodge City radar (KDDC), 98 km away, was scanning. The volume nearest the touchdown began at 00:32 UTC.

Open the radar archive at this moment, over the track

Reflectivity and velocity, decoded from the Level II archive in the browser. Volumes take a few seconds to open the first time.

Local storm reports within 60 km of the path, in the three hours either side.

From the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's archive of National Weather Service local storm reports.

The live radar over the trackEvery 2019 tornado in OklahomaEvery tornado in Oklahoma since 1950Warnings in force in Oklahoma nowThe forecast where you are

21 more were confirmed in the United States that day.

Ratings are the survey's, read off the damage rather than measured; the rating scale is above. Tornado counts rise through the record as reporting improved, so a year in the 1950s is not comparable with one today except for the strongest tornadoes, which were always noticed.

NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database, 1950-2025, the official record kept by NOAA's Storm Prediction Center.